Peace for Palestine (and Us)

Why the U.S. can’t disengage from Mideast diplomacy

What, if anything, does American diplomacy accomplish in the Middle East?

Contemplating the Egyptian mess—where the United States is now distrusted, blamed, and largely despised by every faction, Andrew Bacevich writes, “In the four decades before Camp David, the U.S. had managed to steer clear of war in the Middle East; in the near four decades since, U.S. involvement in hostilities throughout the region has become routine, with little to show as a result.”

Camp David was celebrated at the time, a highlight of Jimmy Carter’s term, and earned Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize. To persuade Egypt and Israel to make peace, the United States committed itself to subsidizing both states to the tune of several billions a year. While the core agreement has held up—those states have not fought a war with one another since—the anticipated broader benefits never materialized. The accord’s loosely drafted provisions to open a path towards Palestinian self-determination were brushed aside by a Likud government dedicated to expanding Israel into the West Bank. Consequently, Egyptian-Israeli peace was not a first step towards a broader Arab-Israeli peace, but only a localized salve. The question of Palestine continued to fester.

Thirty-five years later, we are at it again, with John Kerry’s recent bid to sponsor a final status negotiation between Israel and the Palestinians. Meanwhile the region slides into chaos, riven by conflicts that have little or nothing to do with Israel or Kerry’s negotiation. It’s fair to ask whether there is anything America can do right in the Middle East, and whether we should even try. Why should America care about Palestinian statehood anyway?

Such questions arise inevitably, but especially when the perennial realist answer—Mideast oil and our dependence on it—is no longer the trump that it was before the advent of hydraulic fracturing to extract more oil in North America.

Yet the more one thinks, the more clear it is that there is no easy exit. One reason is that the United States bears considerable historical responsibility for the Israel-Palestine impasse. If it is politically difficult to stand aside from conflicts where America has no stake or historical connection—as in Syria—what of one where America has close emotional ties with one participant, extensive involvement with the other, and has already been engaged for nearly three generations?

When the United States recognized Israel in 1948, after supporting the UN partition resolution that gave it a legal basis, Washington had no intention of endorsing Palestinian statelessness. For 15 years after Israel’s birth, U.S. presidents and diplomats pressed the Jewish state on the Palestinian refugee problem, pushing proposals that included extensive repatriation of displaced Palestinians back into Israel proper. The policy that eventually supplanted these, after the 1967 war, was to try to advance peace by arming Israel, with the idea that a strong Israel would feel secure enough to make concessions. The strengthening part succeeded all too well, but instead of peace there has now arisen a generation of Israeli leaders who barely pay lip service to diplomatic engagement with their Arab neighbors. With lavish American assistance, Israel has transformed itself from a vulnerable fledgling state into a regional superpower with a considerable conventional and nuclear arsenal.

What then would be the likely outcome of American disengagement? A plausible, even likely scenario would be the lowering of inhibitions on the Israeli right. Gone would be the most powerful restraint on Israel’s deciding it could resolve the Palestinian question any way it pleased. Ethnic cleaning advocates in Israel, already less marginal than they were 20 years ago, would be invigorated. The liberal and humanitarian influence of the American Jewish community would grow faint, as American Jews would no longer be seen as a critical link to U.S. aid and support. In short, Israel would be in unchained, its worse impulses empowered.

American interests would be affected. Few Muslims would hold America blameless for whatever Israel did. Anti-American propaganda, which has considerable resonance in the Mideast now, would be supercharged. An al-Qaeda that has already begun to recover from defeats in Afghanistan and Iraq would be replenished with recruits. And the terrorist threat facing the United States would be amplified.

This is not the only possible result of our “walking away.” But it seems a likely one. To admit this is not an argument for the status quo—for American diplomats to serve as “Israel’s lawyers” and for Washington to view the region through the optic of what is best for Israel. We have already done that.

On the American political scene, there are few strong advocates for a thorough reassessment of our Mideast diplomacy. Obama hinted at major changes in his early speeches but drew back when it was made clear that even members of his own party in Congress would applaud Benjamin Netanyahu over their own president. Under such circumstances, is it even worth talking about new strategies?

Of course it is—politics can be surprisingly fluid, and establishments can collapse with surprising speed.

So let us stipulate: American policy should be consistent with American values. Forty-six years of Israeli rule over a people that has neither self-determination nor civil rights flouts such values. Secondly, the U.S. should welcome the input and assistance of other powers, particularly in Europe. (It would not hurt to acknowledge that European anti-Semitism was the original impetus for Zionism.) And then let us think about real alternatives. Could an Israel within the 1967 borders, alongside an independent Palestine, become part of the European Union, with trade and immigration rights? Would not such solution satisfy the Israeli wish to be part of the West? Would it not also transform Palestinian life immeasurably for the better? Such alternatives deserve to be explored—they are far more promising than either trying to walk away or continuing in well-worn ruts.

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20 Responses to Peace for Palestine (and Us)

I think McConnell is the only paleoconservative who’s consistently argued for more US intervention in the Middle East. And in other articles, he’s consistently argued for vigorous US action to bring about democratization in the Middle East – more precisely, in this one, particularly intractable area of the Middle East. So you gotta give him credit for not toeing the paleo party line.

I do agree with a lot in this article, but I think this one statement is wrong: “Few Muslims would hold America blameless for whatever Israel did [after disengagement].” If, per impossibile, there were a US disengagement, then Muslim opinion would follow closely. That’s because Muslim hatred of America is based on reality, not illusion. Change the reality, and the perception will change as well. Especially (since we’re just imagining here) if the US were to adopt rhetoric that appreciated Palestinian demands. And even more so, if the US spoke in clearly pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel terms. Michael Neumann, one of the best writers on the Israel-Palestine war, has pointed this out.

Of course none of that will happen, but a disengagement won’t happen either in the foreseeable future. The point is that if the US government were to disengage, as Rand Paul and others advocate, Muslim hatred of America would most likely decrease drastically.

A great summary about how trapped we are by our “best friend in the region.

The flaw in all peace efforts is not understanding that Israel is run my militarist who are obsessed with one thing: the highly defensible border that would be created by the Jordan River. Everything else is a show for Americans.

The fly in the ointmint is the non-starter of challenging “Greater Israel.” “The Gun And The Olive Branch” by David Harris contains hair rasing quotes from past Israeli leaders that should give pause to the notion that anything can be changed in Israel that would make it amendable to changing its relationship with the Palestinians. All the scenarios mentioned in this piece sound more like neocon PR spin. I thought TAC would never sound like Foreign Policy on a bad day.

Re: “What then would be the likely outcome of American disengagement? A plausible, even likely scenario would be…”

One could generate an equally plausible and just as dystopian scenario as an outcome of continuing American engagement. Because the Israelis consider and treat the Palestinians as human garbage. And the Palestinians hate them for it.

For any strategy to be successful there would have to be a profound transformation in the social and economic relationships between Israeli Jews and Palestinians. And that is just not going to happen. No way will the Israelis un-ring the ethnic cleansing bell. Moreover, the Israelis consider their cash cow American benefactors as suckers, so will never honestly negotiate. And the rest of the planet is at least fairly contemptuous of the United State political regime. There is no upside to United States involvement under the present conditions.

This quagmire is another major FAIL of the America as World Cop model. The United States couldn’t “fix” the Balkans, can’t fix Iraq, can’t fix Afghanistan, can’t fix Egypt, can’t fix Syria and it can’t fix Israel/Palestine. The best that it could do would be to invite another entity to take the negotiation reins, disengage from the mess, cut off the Israeli tail that wags the American dog, and hope the geo-political wounds of arrogant stupidity heal over the course of 5 or 10 years.

I don’t think it does to contemplate American values without contemplating American sentiments. And those sentiments – certainly among secular Americans – do tend towards support for a secular Israel against a Arab cause which smells of Sectarianism.

Diplomacy may be devoid of Emotion, but Foreign Policy is not devoid of Emotion.

It does not do to forget that from a secular perspective, the ME shows us religion at its very worst.It is a vindication of every charge laid at Religion’s door by Dawkins or Pinker.

I have been watching sveral debates online between secular Americans with Muslims – and Israel certainly came up – and a straightforward detestation for the Arab side of the equation became more pronounced when participants were openly atheistic or agnostic.

It’s the kind of interaction that you don’t taste in a simple,detached opinion-poll. The very word Islam has the same kind of smell as Monsanto, at the gut-level.

Hence – support for an embattled secular country IS the default option. That is something which is probably more pronounced for Democrats than for Republicans.

Under such circumstances, is it even worth talking about new strategies?

WOuld note that while I personally think we should be less engaged, no small irony your accompnaying photo fails to feature and Arab nor Palestinian nor Muslim. And that’s because perhaps they don’t want peace. May be they mouth happy bromides to wishfully-thinking Western diplomats and journalists. But they in Arabic very Friday will scream for death the Israel and the US. I find this video most isntructive for the entirety of the Middle East; it’s crazytown nutball land. Also, let’s keep them there instead of having any come here. It’s not our problem. if they wish a bad future for their children, it’s on them. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PG-qCyYZRms

Politically and militarily, Israel is a State designed to take and hold territory in increments, through superior force. That is the present reality, and at this point the past does not matter, at least not in terms of dealing with the present. The fact that a significant portion of our population (and government) supports this precludes our government ever intervening successfully in the “situation”.

While I agree that letting them slip from the leash might enable them further, they are not really on the leash anyway; i.e. we do what they say, not vice versa. We have no leverage at all in the relationship.

I believe that our only real options are to continue to enable them with military support while tacitly condoning everything they do, or walk away. The results of our current policy are not what we intended and the price is high. Like another commenter here, I’m not convinced that the Muslim nations would continue to hold us responsible for what Israel does if we walk away. In fact, there are more reliable client states in the area, e.g. Turkey.

Scott’s writing on this issue have been invaluable. That said, continuing US involvement in the Israeli/Arab Punch and Judy show seems pointless to me.

Suppose for instance that the Palestinians were to get their state, contiguous to Israel. Is it at all likely that the Israelis wouldn’t treat it like we used to treat Haiti? Given the nature of the people involved, would such a state ever be a normal one? They surely should have one, but that needn’t blind us as to just what kind of state it would be.

I think the better course is to understand the difference between dramas and tragedies. The nature of the Israeli/Arab relationship will be a tragic on for the foreseeable future. Let’s get out of the cast as soon as possible.

BTW I’m glad to see Scott’s suggestion regarding the Europeans. The Middle East is after all, in their backyard.

“What then would be the likely outcome of American disengagement? A plausible, even likely scenario would be the lowering of inhibitions on the Israeli right. Gone would be the most powerful restraint on Israel’s deciding it could resolve the Palestinian question any way it pleased. Ethnic cleaning advocates in Israel, already less marginal than they were 20 years ago, would be invigorated. The liberal and humanitarian influence of the American Jewish community would grow faint, as American Jews would no longer be seen as a critical link to U.S. aid and support. In short, Israel would be in unchained, its worse impulses empowered.”

It seems to me that the restraints mentioned are already pitifully weak almost to the vanishing point. The Israeli right is “unchained” right now, and already does pretty much any damn thing it pleases, partly, at least, because it knows the enthralled USA will go along with it, in the end, no matter how much or how little it squawks about it. Indeed, it seems to me much more plausible that without US military, financial, diplomatic and political support and cover, Israel’s leaders might be more, not less, amenable to reasonable solutions. Think about the argument here…basically, the author is saying that all that the USA does for Israel counts for naught, that Israel would somehow be stronger, would be even more in the catbird seat, if the USA dumped it, root and branch. I think that makes little sense. We, the USA, are enabling Israel, and have been for decades. Worse yet, we are enabling the worst element in Israel, the right, with our unstinting and unconditional support.

Anyway, what is the alternative? Continue to do whatever Israel and the Israeli right want, but somehow cling to a pious hope that the two state solution mentioned will come about anyway? How “plausible” is that?

“Few Muslims would hold America blameless for whatever Israel did. Anti-American propaganda, which has considerable resonance in the Mideast now, would be supercharged. An al-Qaeda that has already begun to recover from defeats in Afghanistan and Iraq would be replenished with recruits. And the terrorist threat facing the United States would be amplified.”

I think just the opposite. MOST Muslims would stop blaming the USA for Israeli actions, because the connection would no longer be there in fact. As mentioned by another poster, the Muslims blame the USA for what it does, not based on some chimera or misperception. Change the reality and lessen the blame.

Of course, some extremist groups might continue to blame the USA, but they would be weakened, not strengthened, by having the legs cut out from under their factual claims. Right now, one need not be some kind of Al Qaeda fanatic to hold the USA responsible for Israeli intransigence and brutality, but, if the USA cut off the aid to Israel, stopped using its UNSC veto power in Israel’s service, stop backing Israel in its insane vendetta against Iran, and so on and so forth, the folks in the Muslim world would, for the most part, stop blaming the US. After all, Sweden and Switzerland don’t come in for much in the way of Muslim extremist attacks. It is mostly the USA, and its pro Israel NATO supporters (like the UK) who have been attacked.

And again, what is the alternative? Keep supporting Israel in the forlorn hope that it will make concessions, thereby ensuring that Muslims continue to hate the USA, and with good reason? Can’t stop doing that because, goes the argument, they will continue to hate us anyway, without good reason. That hardly seems persuasive to me.

The US should walk away AND quit protecting Israel with UN vetoes. There is no upside to this relationship for the US.

Israel just has too much baggage. Maybe in your 20s, you might wear yourself out trying to make such a relationship work. In your middle years? Forget it, you just walk away. (I think Robert Duvall said something like that in a movie)

Could an Israel within the 1967 borders, alongside an independent Palestine, become part of the European Union, with trade and immigration rights? Would not such solution satisfy the Israeli wish to be part of the West? Would it not also transform Palestinian life immeasurably for the better?

In order:

Absolutely not. The Levant, regardless of whatever political regime rules over it, is decidedly not European. This has been clear since at least the British and French mandates, if not since the Crusades. Georgia and Azerbaijan are already fringe cases of “Europeaness” but at least they lay within the agreed geographical boundaries of Europe. Even a hypothetical Levant populated entirely by immediate immigrants from Europe would not be European, any more than the Eastern Coast of North America is/was European. As a practical consideration, Israeli ascension to the EU would necessarily require a similar process for Palestine, and that even more than the former would be opposed by all sections of Europe.

Israel only wishes to be part of The West insomuch as they want aid and political legitimacy from it. Should those benefits go away (as they would in the case of a general disengagement), Israel would reorient appropriately. Israel is not full of pro-Western ideologues. In fact, quite the opposite.

There’s no doubt that a Palestine that is bounded by the 1967 borders would be better off than now, but presupposing that this happens via some impossible mechanism doesn’t move it any closer to that result.

Why not let the market sort it out? If there is no economic, strategic or moral advantage to supporting Israel – which objective realities indicate to be the case – simply stop. (And America can certainly use that $3 billion annual welfare payment for better purposes.)

The vast majority of Israel’s oil, grains, raw materials and military equipment come from abroad, and on the order of 80 percent of its GDP comes from foreign trade. Most of that trade is with the US and the European Union, and Israel’s growing apartheid tendencies are already costing it European support.

As that momentum builds – and American consumers finally wake up to what a truly ugly, corrupt and antidemocratic state Israel is and join in boycott and divestment movements – Israel will implode economically. And, ultimately – if it persists – politically.

We have spent decades coddling Israel with unquestioning diplomatic support of their every move, regardless of our own best interests, and billions of dollars of elite weaponry and money. So much so that if we were to disengage it is indeed quite possible that the already powerful ethnic cleansing advocates in Israel would be empowered.

However, if our disengagement were also accompanied by the dissolution of the P.A., thus causing Israel to bear the full cost and burden of its own occupation, and the full disengagement of European countries they would probably have to grit their teeth and continue to suppress those desires. A country as accustomed to wealth and a nice, Western standard of living as Israel would not take well to being reduced to an economic pariah.

You are quite right, in fact I think a lot of the actual brain work done on the Gulf is done by Palestinians of the diaspora. So Palestinians are generally rather educated. So are Argentinians. I would not invest in the governmental/societal future of Argentina.

This has to be more of the more bizarre articles I’ve read on this website… and the comments section follows suit accordingly. I’m going to take particular exception to the notion that if the U.S. were to disengage, that Israel’s “worst impulses” would be empowered and somehow Israel would see fit to kill every Arab in the West Bank (I can only imagine that is the implication of that comment).

Lets review briefly the short history of the are:

1948 – UN offers Jewish/Arab partition plan, Jews accept, Arabs decline and attack the Jews with aims of eliminating them. Arabs leading the war suggest all Arabs leave the area to make the cleansing easier. Most Arabs comply but they lose the war, hence the “refugee” problem.
1967 – Israel attacked by all its neighbors, wins, gains ground.
1973 – Neighbors mass to attack Israel, Israel prevails. Until this point, all the non-Jews in Israel had been Arabs, but this is where they decide strength of arms is not going to succeed, so they devise a plan to become a new aggrieved group called the “Palestinians”. The term, Palestine, having been originated by the Romans as a name for the land that had formerly been Israel. Most scholars believe the term Palestine was a take on “Phillistine”.

So, what monstrous impulses have all these wars of aggression and subsequent barrage of tens of thousands of rockets caused Israel to harbor?

1) Returning the Sinai to Egypt in exchange for peace.
2) Signing the Oslo accords in 1993
3) Offering a comprehensive pace plan including a sovereign palestinian state that includes Gaza, Wb, and even East Jerusalem in 2000 (rejected by Arafat)
4) Unilateral withdraw from Gaza in 2005 gratefully responded to with a hail of rocket fire)
5) Another comprehensive offer of 98% of the Palestinian demands in 2008, rejected by Abbas.

I’m not exactly seeing how the author arrives at his logic leap here that somehow the country which has continuously offered land for the promise of peace is somehow going to go on a murderous rampage if America disengages.

The references to ethnic cleansing that are implied in the article and explicitly state in some comments… there were a few less than 200,000 Arabs in 1948 in the area. Today there are nearly 2,000,000. If that is ethnic cleansing, the Israeli’s are REALLY bad at it. To me, it sounds more like the protestations of a madman.

Finally, the author’s implication that Israel should join the EU with full “immigration rights”… it sounds to me more like the argument for “Joos go home to Europe” than an actual suggestion or even theory.

“While just several years ago annexing Judea and Samaria seemed liked an implausible, unrealistic, or even taboo suggestion, today the concept of establishing Jewish sovereignty over all of the land from the River to the Sea has grown into an entire movement.”…

“Another concern tackled from many perspectives was the issue of the future status of the Arabs living under Israeli rule in Judea and Samaria. Some suggested providing them with full Israeli citizenship, while others favored offering them citizenship in next-door Jordan.”